


Run Ahead, Trail Through the Bones Thereafter

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Beforan Politics, Gen, Maybe Doc Scratch Tho, Other, Speculative Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-07 23:25:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4281957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When one is surrounded by wigglers how does one govern them? Can a grub be held accountable to the same standards as an adult? And given that half of the population are nothing more than aggrandized adolescents, how might they rule themselves? The Empress is obliged to consider these questions and others. Ruling is hard, and only a very few could even hope to understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run Ahead, Trail Through the Bones Thereafter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZeeCatfish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZeeCatfish/gifts).



 

 

> _“This is the end of an era, one long shared by many of you and I. For sweeps too numerous to politely mention and too short to properly appreciate I have been the foretroll in charge of keeping you up to date on the life and happenings of the Benevolent Consideration._
> 
> _Friends and foes alike, my watch has ended. At Ninety-Eight sweeps I will be stepping into retirement. My replacement is an idiot and a cad; lacking all delicacy and decorum. You will love him and likely forget all that has come before us. Some of you were not born yet. Some of you crave a different society than that which has been so carefully crafted and maintained for us since the time that I began my social column regarding the Empress Peixies' taste in horn-jewelry._
> 
> _Others of you have recently hatched. To you I say good luck and keep your specibi ready. The world that you step into is profoundly changed from that which I toured and stayed in during my youth. Sharp horns and sharper claws will be your first defense, a sharper mind and well-tended clade your fortress. Change inexorable is shaping its forces on the world even as gravity from our moons shape the tides._
> 
> _I have stood sentinel for Her coronation, the wars between ourself and the continents at the polar North, her policy changes following the civil-rights abuses affecting force-kinetics and many other incidences too numerous to count._
> 
> _I was there for the Nitram murder._
> 
> _I was there for the expose in the courts and subsequent riots._
> 
> _We all huddled together during the cult riots not ten sweeps prior._
> 
> _However, like all watchers, it is my turn to step back and into the dusk. Let someone else put on a sun-cloak and take up the duty of truth and the closest thing to the truth that might be out there. There is nothing more juicy and delightful than a whopping helping of the truth. I hope that my predecessor finds his kismet much the way I did, on a rival network, furiously talking shit._
> 
> _Bulge-face if you're listening, I hate you and I think you are the sorriest excuse for a commentator that ever had the misfortune of avoiding an early death during grubhood. It has been my pleasure and aggressive passion 'debating' with you all these sweeps._
> 
> _That is all that I have for you and that is all the time that the network has for me. Respectfully and with a healthy dose of fear for the future, this is Aliais Nebree, signing off.”_

 

“Is it true that you had a black crush on that declarator?”

Turning on his pile of pillows and squid-themed plush, Karkat regarded his Empress. Settled into a bubble-themed seat with her feet tucked under her and her hair hauled back into a wild snarl of braids and loops, Feferi watched the view-screen with the same dispassionate and quiet expression that she turned to everything.

“When I was a little krill. Perhaps. Aliais was someone that was always there. In the press-corps and everywhere else. Like a particularly irritating teal-ghost. It's weird that she is retiring this early.”

Karkat looked at the lines under the teal's eyes, and the streaks of dark, sick reds shooting up through her horn-beds and ascending toward the lighter keratin at the tips.

“I think she has cancer.”

“I would trust your judgement on that. How sad.”

Granted, he seemed to have a knack for spotting deformities and trouble in others, Karkat rolled his eyes at her agreement. Potentially that troll was someone that might have been her friend. Certainly he was no mediculler and whatever thoughts he had merely amounted to speculation. Still, the implication ought to have elicited more than the verbal amount of a quiet burp. Getting up and moseying to her side, Karkat peered at her, trying to get around the shield of her googles. Political-face was his least favorite of all of Feferi's expressions.

“When you say that, do you mean it or are you saying it because it is the right thing to say?”

Her eyes stayed locked forward, advertisements reflecting along the flat planes of her tinted eyewear. “I don't know.”

She loved him enough to be honest. She loved both of them in that way. Smoothing a hand along her cheek he papped once, possibly a little harder than necessary. Her eyes slid to him, focusing and narrowing just a touch.

Flicking a fin at him she opened a tiny cut along the inner side of his arm with the tines. Reaching up and taking his hand in her own she kissed the cut, leaving a muted healing spot in its wake. It would be a blemish for a few nights, and then gone entirely in a few more. Neither bothered nor offended, Karkat answered her implied question.

“You should say things like that because you feel them. Because you feel anything at all. Instead you just kind of act like a weird bureaucratic puppet. There is so much more to you than that. So act like it.”

Winding her arms around him, Feferi tucked him against her ribs. To the casual observer there might be similarities drawn to some of their cephalopods striking out and tangling around their food. The neoprene of her suit felt weird against his arms and his cheek where his face smushed against her throax. The texture was as familiar as it was off-putting. Better than the skins of dead naturae and much more durable, but still incorrect. If he were to be that proximal to her, the cool touch of her skin would have been better.

“Hope, emotions, a bunch of those things are for wigglers. They are for the young and for the innocent. I am not innocent anymore.”

She felt like talking about deep things so he would listen to her. Perhaps act the legal advocate to her gentler inclinations.

“Is that something that you want?”

“For the sake of simplicity? Certainly.”

“But I don't hear a hard yes in that.”

“Certainty is also something that young ones have.”

“You have it frequently as a commanding officer in the military and a top official in the government.”

Feferi was known for her laughter, for the progressive reforms and compassion that she had put into her reign. She was known for having a hard-line stance on issues regarding trolls that lived the shortest - those who were the most vulnerable. In answer to all of that – to all of the care that she put into those that were born and who died within the span of some of her longer thoughts – her society pushed back. Casteism stood at an all time high. His freak-mutant hatchmate had died three times and had been subsequently brought back. There seemed to be something encoded in his very being that physically kept him from keeping his mouth shut.

This time she had left Kankri in the hatching caves and to his fate – rather than attempting to coddle him. He stood at her side – an supernaturally long-lived sentinel curious to see how it all played out. The love and the care that they had put into her race had not played out. His species was a monstrous, bloated, cannibalizing thing that would collapse under its own weight.

Still, they hoped.

She always hoped for the best in them, and dreamt that those who were the youngest would not internalize all that had come before.

He saw them bite into one-another, divide into groups and find the smallest excuse to rend at all of the unity that his Empress had tried to weave for them. It was an opinion that he had long held but not shared with her, that she could not force her people to love one-another. It would be a discipline that they would have to develop for themselves.

The message was starting to wear itself into Feferi's face in the form of lines and stress fractures in her back fangs.

None of that showed in the woman that sat with him, eyes fixed on a middle distance and idly tracking the translucent floating forms of aurelia aurita in a circular-shaped enclosure. It had been a present from one of the alien CEOs that she began work with. It was more correct to say that some of her lords and ladies had gone ahead and ignored her direction regarding developing races and made contact some sweeps back. The culmination of some of those efforts had resulted in imported sealife.

“Fef?”

“Hmm?” Glancing down she pressed a smooch to the space where his eyebrows most often knitted together.

“You are certain about things when you give executive orders aren't you?”

“You know me better than that. You know the whole process better than that, Karcrab.”

“It's not like you to be cynical.”

They both understood that it was as much their trade agreements, the lords and ladies, and some of the senate members as it was Feferi that drove the direction of their empire. Listening to the populace was a double-edged sword. Certainly they were represented, but that representation had to reflect their experience and lives. Otherwise it was nothing more than lip-service and what some of the older and more hierarchical wanted as a societal standard.

Drumming her clawtips carefully along his sides, she fanned her fins back and then forward again. “My Empire is one of wigglers. No matter what I want, all of the decisions have to be made by trolls who will die before they even learn anything.”

This conversation again. Karkat set his back fangs and let her lay down her position.

“And I know... I know because we have talked about this so often, that I have to let them find their way. I have to let them make their decisions. But it's so hard!”

“Not really as hard as you're making it...”

“Harder! Because the minute that they live long enough to have perspective – to really understand what things are about then they die.”

“I think you're oversimplifying that by a fucking lot.”

“Am I really though?” Feferi stared down at him, eyebrows knotted behind her glasses. “Over, and over again, the same mistakes.”

“Damn me if I have to quote Kankri, but I'm going to raise one of his points here – that is what the study of history is for. That is what the highbloods theoretically are there for. They are the citizenry that live the longest. They are our historians and record-keepers. It's to you and for us – your cohort and advisors – to make sure that they keep a good record and don't distort things. They will set some of the policy in the long term, but it is just as important to allow for innovative thinking in the short term. Or do you really think that I'm a wiggler?”

Feferi dipped her head back, growling in soft frustration. “You know it isn't like that.”

“It just sounds like it.” He had loved her for more sweeps than some trolls had been alive and it was uniquely his job to keep her accountable. This shit would not fly nor could he let it.

“Your Heiress doesn't listen. She's not doing her school feeds and I'm really worried about what is going to happen when she steps up. Are you really just going to step aside? And is she going to let you?”

“Meenah is going to bring change. Maybe that's what this world needs.”

The world needed something – that much was certain. More often than not, she had stood back and let the senates and other governing bodies do her work for her. Increasingly she had taken personal days and stayed inside and often submerged in the pools leading out and to the oceans attached to her hive.

“I don't know that I agree that the world needs Meenah.”

“Meenah is what the world is getting.”

“You could change that. You could fight for your throne.”

They watched each other in silence for a while.

“You can't do penance for something that isn't your fault. Isn't it enough that you pulled Damara and Mituna and some of the other dead ones back into the egg-cycle. They're brooding now. You gave them another chance at life.”

“Another iteration does not a life bring back. You have met Kankri enough times to know that.”

Jabbing a foreclaw down into one of the plush and taking it's eye out, he growled at her. “Give yourself some credit. You are doing your best. I don't like it when you don't think about that too – on top of all of the other shit.”

Feferi released him, getting up out of the pile to pace a little, making slow circuits through the room. She might leave him for the evening and disappear into the waves. That had become one of her habits as of late. Being only marginally capable of swimming after her and vastly uncomfortable in submersible temporary swimbladders he preferred that she did not do it at all.

“I don't want to fight with you Karcrab.”

“So stop.” Staring at her he chucked some of the plush over onto her side, readjusting the pile for when she came back over to settle down.

 

*

Aradia was a troll that Feferi never expected but always ought to.

Every few generations she would return. Sometimes her name would change, and her mood along with it.

Damara appeared to her frequently as the face of societal pain. She had been a murder victim. She had been involved in a civil war. She came to Feferi to talk in very broken Offshore dialect about rights and the fact that immigration policies were 'chute-waste and like being fucked dry'. Having a pail-worker talk to her like a peer had been a waking moment in the long dream of her later reign.

Aradia was the other face. A second voice just like Kankri to her Karkat. She showed up early in her lives. She showed up later.

Her memory stretched longer than it ever ought to have and they would pick up conversations after a span of sweeps.

This time she was a pre-adolescent, still light-bodied and soft-horned. She appeared at one of the few outreach events that Feferi cared to attend to. Tucked away back on the lawns and pressed into the side of her guardian's side, playing at shy. At her side a large ram trotted, white-streaked with the lusus fluke that made some of the terrifying naturae docile and pleasant to live with. Making her way through the crowd with murmured apologies she took a knee next to the young lady.

“I still don't agree with your thoughts on interstellar space travel.”

“And yet I was right about it, wasn't I?” The young woman smirked, full of too many fangs and too much confidence. Her guardian boggled, staring between the two of them. “Your Majesty?”

“You're excused. Thank you so much for bringing your charge to see me. I would love to have a word with her.”

The minder stepped back, not knowing what else to do.

Coyly offering a hand up, Aradia followed at her side as they toured some of the topiary mazes, fingers linked through Feferi's.

Drawing her up and into her arms Feferi pressed her forehead against Aradia's. The plates of her face were not fully into adult formation. If they head-butted like this it would be another handful of sweeps before they could speak again. There would be a body in the bushes and there would be a cursory inquiry. Growling at her quietly her companion answered in a soft alto. She was approximately as threatening as a paper-sack and Feferi adored her doubly for her bravery.

“Meenah's going to push interplanetary interaction. There's not much I can do at this point.”

Aradia leaned forward and bit her lip, drawing blood and licking the bead that welled up off of it. “You could challenge her and work on another heiress. You could continue to guide your people to where they need to go.”

Feferi dropped her down to stand on her own feet and walked at her side, brushing her fingers along the sharp leaves and branches of the organic walls of the maze.

“But you won't, will you?”

“I don't think I know how anymore.”

“That's tinkerbull crap and you know it.”

The shadows of Feferi's horns fell over Aradia's face in two slashes cutting off the moonlight.

“Tell me the truth.” Her always-ghost walked briskly at her sides, asking for no lenience in the speed of Feferi's stride.

“Don't you already know it? You seem to know everything. Either you or your name-similar.” Aradia and Damara were dreams and nightmares that appeared to her so often that they were almost expected. They lived and died, they rose and fell only to rise again. Nothing about her powers entered into the equation, it felt almost like something else at work entirely.

“Damara has a different agenda than I do. I'm interested in you because you are interesting and because I know you can do better. There are things that you are here to do and begin. If you turn away from it, we're fucked. Don't fuck us, not without talking to us a little first. It's impolite.”

Rounding one of the corners Feferi stared into the massive lake in the heart of the maze. White birds fished in the shallow tiers of it while fat fish swam around and hid under outcroppings and in the shade near the reeds whispering in the water.

“I am tired.”

“So sad. So are we. We are tired of an ambivalent and removed Empress.”

“Well. You'll get a new one soon.”

Pulling her rings off, Feferi threw them in a glittering rain into the pond. The fish rushed to investigate before deciding that the new inclusions to their space were inedible. Working her hands up and into her hair she tugged at the fastenings on her horn-cuffs and some of the prettier rings. Plunk, plop, splash, all of it went into the fountain. This was a ritual that they repeated frequently.

“Where did all of your love go?”

“It got buried under the weight of all of my sweeps.”

“Where did your faith go?”

“It became dispersed amongst a select few sane trolls who I loved.” Divested of all of the sparkly crap that they insisted on adorning her with, Feferi was left with a few ties in her hair and her usual clothes. It felt more natural to be that way. The glittering Empress was a different person than she was. They inhabited two different worlds and lived two very different lives.

“Really? What sort of melodrama is that? What is it that took away all of the bright and shiny ideas that we talked about while we were hooking up the satellite relays?”

That was nine lifetimes ago for her, before the space program really had taken off. Prior Empresses had left it unattended and there was so much more advancement that needed to be made. They found other resources and more space. They started to expand and to learn so many more things.

“I saw what we were like.”

The smell of the lab where they found the Captor boy would never leave her. It was a combination of the sweet notes of rotting meat and the strange, acerbic scents of chemicals. The official working description of the lab had been a 'biological solutions' hub. They were developing wire that could be grown, rather than pieced together by metals that required excessive mining to acquire. They had made great strides. They talked about energy sources.

There had been wires embedded in his aurals. For some reason, more than anything else that small image stayed with her. The crook of magenta wires – something close to her hue – stuck fast in some poor boy's thinkpan and regulating his small nerve movements.

“When did you become such a coward?”

Feferi wheeled and punched Aradia in the face. The sound of cartilage breaking was sickening. There was not a lot of time. She would have to act fast. Burning-hot blood dripped along her fingertips as she focused her energy. There was no other option save to fix it and put it right.

Plates slid back into place.

Her ruptured eye mended.

He airways cleared.

Pressing kisses along Aradia's face she crooned. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's better now. See? You're okay. You shouldn't do that. You shouldn't taunt me like that.”

Aradia reached out, pinching hard along her gills and she yelped, pushing away from the source of the pain. The young woman stood feral, brilliantly warm eyes focused on her.

“You still are here. You still are with us and you feel things. Direct that energy into the last days of your reign. As with all who have ruled many, you don't know what you are giving up. And the only way that Alternian Empresses leave their post is death. You are not the sort of woman to lay down and passively accept the changeover.”

Licking her fingertips, Feferi arched her fins at Aradia. Hooking an arm around her waist she fell backward into the fountain, drenching the pair of them and dispersing the blood soaking their skin. Aradia's hair floated around her like a wavy cloud.

 

*

 

Somehow this was a thing that happened. Karkat felt a little incredulous sitting beside the head mechanic and the public declarator from the other night. Up close she looked even shittier than she had during the broadcast – all of the artful makeup and careful lighting was no longer present to assist her facial situation. Instead of pointing out the obvious, he looked at her.

“You're still blogging?”

Aliais sat with claws resting on a tablet and recording device set to one side. “I got bored.”

“Then maybe you ought to do something worthwhile with your time. Go punch your blackmate. See a film. Sleep.”

Snorting at him, the declarator shook her head.

“I would say the same thing to you, Vantas. You're looking remarkably well preserved for a rust. At your tender old age you might consider reading all of the literature that you skipped on when you were younger. Your ticket is up.”

Smirking with fangs at him, all of the barb of the insult was dulled. They understood one another. Her life had been shortened in a way that she had no control over. His was long in a way that defied rational explanation and also happened to be a state secret. They were outside of the paradigm of things.

Clearing his throat, Equius Zahhak glanced pointedly at their guest. “If you are ready, we have received recording clearance for our conversation.”

Nebree's attention focused like the auto-targeting sight on a pulse-rifle. “Thank you for your time Engineer Zahhak. We are acquainted previously so there is really little need for the pleasantries.”

“Though they are to be acknowledged, I agree that there is little need for formality.”

Hands folded with deceptive care in front of him, Equius watched her through his work-glasses. As he was not engaged in welding his current pair were light enough to track the line of his gaze. Higher tint was necessary during some of his more intensive processes, but this was simply a conversation.

“What is your official position about the trade agreements with the SOL system and some of the attached territories?”

“Some of that is documented in public archive, but I know that you will not leave it simply at that.”

Equius smiled, one of his broken fangs appearing in a brief flash. Political-face was something that he had grown into with grooming and time and now manipulated like a master. The older that he got, the less the fractures appeared in his dental protrusions.

“I feel that it is necessary to follow our Empress' direction in things. She is possessed of a long term understanding that none of us might possibly grasp. All that we can do is help her to direct that wisdom toward something greater. In that vein, I think that it is best that we hold off on further first-contact.”

Nebree reminded Karkat a great deal of some of the sea-goats in the oceans when they decided that they were going to attack a watercraft. Eased forward in her seat, her horns had subtly squared themselves out into a challenge posture.

“Would you say that this opinion is informed solely out of respect or out of your personal feelings for the Empress?”

Having expected something of the like, Equius' spine still straightened into a military semblance of discipline. “I do not comment on my relationships publicly. You know that.”

“She does though, and you know it.”

Equius' neck bunched near his shoulders, a glacial shift in his otherwise powerful frame.

“That quotation was taken out of context.”

“I don't know that it was. Hearing 'it is hard for me to connect with anyone, knowing that they will be gone so fast' is fairly clear.”

“That was taken out of a much longer and more involved discussion and I do believe that the audio sample was obtained illegally.” Equius' jaw was tightening and his tone invoked equal parts rebuke as threat.

“I am a declarator. My job is to report. Our Empress' feelings about us are something that is of public interest.”

“So then every thing that you say both in your private life in addition to being on the record in public is up to scrutiny and should pass muster?”

The tension between the two of them was making Karkat nervous. Leaning forward and looking at Nebree, he tried to redirect.

“What is it about this that has your interest? Everyone knows that Zahhak is pretty firmly pro-Piexes no matter what happens. He's not the sort that changes his mind without evidence that argues firmly in another direction.”

Leaning back in her chair slightly and shifting, the declarator refocused her attention on him. He could see why Fef might have had a bit of a crush. The slight pinched look of disapproval and hungry attention to all of his body-language was simultaneously off-putting and interesting.

“I am asking these questions because the Engineer is a very prominent figure in the scientific community. His opinion holds weight. Having been close to the Empress only doubles that gravitas. To a greater or lesser extent, what the Empress chooses for us in terms of her Heiress and her policies will determine the future. That was something that my predecessors taught me from the time that I began to intern and we didn't have the planetary intra-web structure. Her prejudices and her thoughts inform the aristocracy. You can see how well that has been going in recent sweeps. Without the aristocracy guiding public policy in a direction that remains sane for the entirety of the spectrum, the new Heiress at best is negligent, or at worse chooses social upheaval.”

At his side Equius tensed and Karkat bumped elbows with him so that he could keep listening. “I'll then ask you this, declarator Nebree. Is it necessary for the Empress to be personally invested in something so sweeping as an Empire? Like, to have her emotionally and emphatically concerned with all of its aspects, parts and pieces?”

Too many nights spent huddling with a lover wailing out of sheer frustration and then putting holes through her walls had disillusioned him of the thought that the Empress must love and understand all simultaneously from all views.

She was one troll.

A troll that had taken the throne young after her predecessor disappeared into the sea and never came back. Feferi's guardian naturae had announced that the prior Empress had died, and that her choice would resume duties.

It was how it was.

The terror-squid spoke and they all listened. Granted the big Mother was simply huge and not really a power to be worried about, her decrees generally tended to name the Heiresses that would do the best for their world. The minders that helped raise the seadwelling grubs never argued with her and strongly advised those on land to do the same. It was tradition and superstition, and a strangely effective way of choosing rulers. It drove Kankri batshit and he and Fef argued about it all the time.

“So long as she does her duty to us and makes decisions in what she believes to be our best interest that are vetted by a community of peers across the spectrum, is that not enough?”

Nebree leaned in, balanced on her elbows and staring hard into his eyes.

“You and I both know that the senates have no confidence in anyone under an olive. Tell me otherwise and I'll strife with you now. I've lived too long and seen too much shit to say anything less than that. The utopia that she promised us is broken. I don't have the answers, but I want to know that the structure that she is putting in place for us is trying to fix the fractures and not taking a lever to them.”

“Growth often comes from damage.” Equius had listened in silence at his side, but rejoined the discussion. “Problems prompt the need for solutions.”

“If you are willing to see that there are problems in the first place.” Nebree flattened a hand on the table, attention flickering between the pair of them.

“I don't argue that.” Karkat huffed at her. “I'm saying that she's doing her best.”

“It's not good enough.”

“You have a lot of opinions for someone that started as a society-commentator.” Equius stared down at her, bristling.

“Having to watch the lies starts to show a pattern to what is being lied about.” Aliais frowned. “Do you suppose that the Empress will have time to answer the questions that I submitted?”

Karkat arched a brow, informing her just what he thought about the merit of that.

“You'll get the results to your questions when and if she has time to answer them.”

Whatever it was that she had on her mind to write about, it was a tossup whether or not Feferi felt the need to address it. There had been a time when she was new, and young, and not protective of her own time when she would answer such things personally. Interns and other assistants would attempt to help and she would bat them away. Thankfully those times had changed.

One of her complaints was valid: over and over again young trolls brought up the same questions without consulting what had already been answered. Over and over again new generations fought the same battles without adding new insight into what had already passed. If there was something to be gleaned, if there was something that could be added into the public discourse that would effect change, then she would consider it.

There never was.

Not in a way that could adjust things.

Kankri had always argued that there were new opinions and voices that could rise out of different and progressing situations.

He had not heard them yet, for as many meetings and symposiums that he attended at Feferi's side, but he was willing to listen. Their methods differed, but in this his caste-mate and he were in accord. Their over-involved declarator had a point that needed addressing, but there was no way to even begin the way that things were. Over sweeps he had watched Feferi beat herself bloody against these questions and come away from them scarred and without resolution.

Nebree left a short while later, leaving a card and thanking them both for their time.

 

*

 

Entering Feferi's chambers sort of felt like entering a Mirthful church or a place of worship centered around the Mother-grubs. The striations in the light coming through the submerged windows above gave the place where her steps had passed a venerated ambiance.

She was his guiding force, and sometimes he wondered if his neck would bow to another. He was a man that respected tradition. He liked rules, and routine and order. What he loved was the curve of her spine where it held her head straight and kept her horns pointed toward the stars. The light in her eyes when she discussed their future as a species was the reason that he had first dared to come and walk with her – to take her up on her open invitation to staff to speak with her when they felt that they had a compelling reason to do so.

At the time they had been experiencing issues with water quality. Some of the shorter lived citizenry were dying from preventable contamination. Some of his team had come up with a solution and he was the one that had been voted to propose it. At the time it went without standing that being a hand-picked team of contractors and engineers would boost their business in astronomical fashion, and the Empress' enthusiasm for warmbloods had seemed the perfect point of ingress into her world.

What he had not realized was that he would find purpose where he belonged -- at her side and sometimes in between her knees, settled firmly on his.

The evening brought her to him in a veil of quiet, hair worn down like the feral citizens that sometimes appeared along the beaches to eat one another, the distinction between land and sea quite thoroughly blurred.

“Equius.”

“Your Majesty.”

“What did the declarator want?”

“A statement.”

Coming to her side he smoothed his thumbs along the arches of her shoulders, kneading in without having to feel terrified of his own body. Feferi was strong enough to be the locus for all of them, she could handle pressure on her body. It would give and adjust without falling apart. The moan that he elicited from his efforts was well worth the care that he took with his hands. Her mouth fell open in a soft curve, her fangs glittering in the lights of the room. 

Rumbling slowly in return he worked along the balls of her shoulders down to her biceps, working his fingers slowly. “I did not tell her anything of interest.”

“I trust that you wouldn’t, silly.”

Chancing to lean forward he pressed a kiss on the crown of her head. “It honors me that I can earn that sort of confidence from you. Thank you.”

“Mmm.”

Coming around her he settled into kneeling at her feet, glancing up and into her face. “Why are you so quiet?”

Most of the time she would clasp his jaw in her hands, the crushing power of her own hands like an embrace of safety. She would make eye contact that made his pusher flip in triple time even while he savored the arrhythmia of it. She was dizzying and beautiful and perfect. Looking at her assured him that while the two of them were small, while their clade and extended cohort were a tiny fraction against millions, that there was a reason to push and struggle.

This time her lashes dipped low, the protective films sliding over her eyes like she sought to hide her intentions.

Her form, her claws and her toes had been revealed to him in a tangle of instances. Sometimes the line of her spine lit up between the strands of her hair like trapped stars in the night sky. Sometimes she pressed him down onto the platform with hands so tight that he wore bruises for weeks after and he got to make a study of the inside of her wrists. He caught fleeting glimpses of the line of her throat in moments spent trapped under the weight of her.

Bliss was folding his knees against the curve of her hips and chittering against her aural as she rocked into him like the waves of the ocean rising and falling along the beach.Once in a great while he spent time with hands grasped firmly against her rumblespheres, held between her thighs and watching her spine bow up toward him in a perfect arc.

“The changeover is coming soon.”

This was careful territory and Equius did not have a safe way to navigate through it.

“It is your prerogative to call it such. Meenah has declared her right to challenge you. Though the seriousness of such a claim I find suspect. We both know her.”

“We do.”

“Feferi.”

Finally, she granted him the sum of her attention, staring down at him and thrumming quietly.

“Do you really believe that Meenah can lead us? I have... so many doubts. It is not normally my place to voice them, but I feel that it is imperative that you hear this. I do not think she is your equal, not in any measure. I think that she enjoys violence and revels in the most superficial parts of being an Heiress while taking none of the rest of it seriously.”

“She’ll do her best Equius. That was all that I could do when I ascended to the throne. Change is not a bad thing. I have said that over and over again until my throat is raw with it.”

“Not all change is equal though--” his thought was cut off with her mouth crashing into his. More efficiently than telling him that she had no use for his opinions, she requested other things of him.

“Shush, my dear one. Come and hold me.”

What choice did he have but to obey. In his mind no other option even warranted consideration.

*

 

“You’re shore about this?”

Looking at her Heiress, Feferi sat at her workstation with hands folded in her lap.

“Yes.”

“It’s going to be a public spectacle, you know. I ain’t angling for anything less. Want it to be known far and wide that I’m the boss and the one that’s going to be reigning. All of this soft shooshy carp didn’t work and we both know it.”

Feferi locked her back fangs. As much as she had tried, as much as she had loved them, it was not quite enough. With all of the care that she had to offer, her trolls kept dying. They murdered each other, they striated into all manner of stupid political configurations. It was a roiling school of scheming, pailing and dreams. None of it had worked like she thought that it might.

“They’ll know. The two of us are not from the same school of thought.”

“Pff. I like it when you don’t have the airs on. You’re a sea’s grub. You can let it show in how you talk and not let all of the land-dwelling mess bother you.”

She was so stupid. So stupid, and strong, bright, and willful. Every question that Feferi posed, Meenah sought to answer with a no just because she could and thus felt that she should.

“The sea brought us up to help them. And to guide them. Do you think that you are capable?”

Meenah flashed a smile that was all sharp fangs and no sincerity. “Of course. Gonna sail our ship right along and chart a course through the stars. You put all that infrastructure and shit in place, now it kinda runs itself don’t it? You shore ain’t got a part to it.”

There were only so many times that she could look into the angry eyes of a ten sweep old who did not understand why it was that she could not qualify for some of the long-term senate seats. It had become tiresome to explain to them ad nauseum that the course of study to qualify for such a position would last longer than her expected life.

It tired her, watching the longer-lived citizens subtly blocking the younger ones into smaller and shittier parts of the hospitable territory.

The fifteenth time that requests to make grub-byproducts legal for consumption was the time that she had given up on trying to explain to a formless mass of idiots that cannibalism was not a good decision nor good for social interaction.

“You will find that your subjects desperately want to rule themselves. What I hope that you have learned is that it is probably best that you do not allow them to do so.”

The layover sweeps between her predecessor and herself had been, plainly, bad. So bad that when she was younger and she thought that there was something that she could offer and compare to them, she had promised that she would always keep fighting. Unfortunately all of their voices had stolen pieces of her away until her arms were too heavy to attempt to lift her 2x3dent.

They had no idea what horror was. This generation, nor their predecessors nor theirs before.

“Don’t know that we ever agreed on that point. Think there’s something to be said for letting the strong be strong and let them that are wanting sink to the bottom. There’s an order in nature and trying to get around it don’t do much.”

She was so young.

“How will you find your best minds?” Resting her chin on her frond she tried to really predict the future that she was bequeathing her species.

“They’ll come to me.”

Of course they would--not. She had no idea.

“And what will you do when they try to do something that you don’t want them to? Are you going to utilize the senate?”

“Never much cared for them. Reminded me a bit much of overinflated naturae all perched in chairs.” Meenah’s eyes shone. “Military is there for a reason. There ain’t nothing to defend against, so I’m going to use them for what they’re supposed to be used for - for protecting me an my interests.”

“Is it your responsibility to make them happy?”

“It’s my responsibility to make sure we flourish. To make sure that we thrive and we _win_.” Meenah stared at her across the space in the room.

“The rest of it is up to rails and shit to sort. I’ll see you in the ring.”

Her Heiress stepped out of the room, heels with bladed backs reporting smartly against the stone lining the hallway.

There was still a little bit of strength in her arms. And there was always time to hatch another Heiress. She would find a way to do this for them, this last little act. Even if she could not care, if she could not find her way back to them she would hold on a while longer.

She could abide.

She flashed her 2x3dent into her hands and followed.

 

*

 

 

> _“It is at the end of my life that I write to you. I lived during a blissful reign of an Empire the like of which I cannot find anywhere else in the stars._
> 
> _I saw that same Empire fall. When I was small and things were beautiful there was a young Heiress that came out of the sea. Many of you were hatched in the interim._
> 
> _Some of you will be finishing basic training soon._
> 
> _Many of you did not live through that._
> 
> _I am sorry that you were not here in gentler times._
> 
> _There was more time then. Time seemed to stretch really far into the horizon._
> 
> _I lived with the Consideration of my Empress. I felt that what she did and how she chose to do it reflected her love for us._
> 
> _Now that we are here, I wish that I had not finished three rounds of intensive genetherapy to survive._
> 
> _Any sort of change or thought given to us right now is a Condescension at best._
> 
> _Be strong._
> 
> _Be strong my friends and fight as hard as you can._
> 
> _There is no beauty left in the world._
> 
> _Ours is an Empire of Bones and Terror.”_

 

> **Final Public Blog Entry of Alais Nebree, Exibit 6, Legislacerator Prosecution, Sedition Trial X4C7**.

 

*

  


_“You and I we're nursing on a poison that never stung_

_Our teeth and lungs are lined with the scum of it_

_Somewhere for this, death and guns_

_We are deaf, we are numb_

_Free and young and we can feel none of it”_

\- **Social Columnist, Aliais Nebree**

  



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